April 12, 2009

Go Navy

Pentagon press conference right now. It was not a planned assault. What
they are saying is that there was an imminent danger to Captain Philips
and the on scene commander (I think that's the commander of USS
Bainbridge) gave the order to take the pirates down. Apparently there
was an AK pointed at Philips and the commander authorized snipers to
take their shots. It was a split section decision.

They had standing authority from the President to take action in the case of an imminent threat to the hostage's life.

The SEAL snipers were on Bainbridge about 20 meters or so from the life
boat and sea conditions were 'deteriorating'. It sounded like
Bainbridge had the life boat under tow at the time.

I'm guessing the early reports of a 'fire fight' were somewhat over
stated. It seems 3 shots, 3 ex-pirates is more like the case.

Rewrite! This version will not be acceptable since insufficient credit is given to Obama.

Navy Seals rescued an American ship captain unharmed and killed three Somali pirates
in a daring operation in the Indian Ocean on Sunday, ending a five-day
hostage standoff between United States naval forces and a small band of
brigands in a covered orange lifeboat off the Horn of Africa.

Acting with President Obama’s
authorization and in the belief that the hostage, Capt. Richard
Phillips, was in imminent danger of being killed by captors armed with
pistols and AK-47s, snipers on the fantail of the destroyer Bainbridge,
which was towing the lifeboat on a 100-foot line, opened fire and
picked off the three captors.

After a Big Skip, Obama's role:

The Defense Department twice asked Mr. Obama for permission to use
military force to rescue Captain Phillips, most recently late on Friday
night, senior defense officials said. On Saturday morning, the
president agreed to permit action, they said, but only if it appeared
that the captain’s life was in imminent danger.

We used to have a policy that we hung pirates from the yardarm. Seems to me that when we followed that policy, we had a lot fewer pirates.

A few cruise missiles would solve the problem. Our policy used to be you harbor a terrorist, you have become a legitimate target. When piracy becomes a losing game, we'll stop having pirates. Or they will all die. Either way.

I win! I win! I was the only one who said they ought to attach a line to the lifeboat and start towing! All the rest of you guys must be idiots!

Bravo Zulu! I don't know what that means, but I'm betting it's high praise and that's good enough for me. Go Navy! Those guys are out there all the time, and it's nice to be able to give them a much deserved round of applause -- and gratitude.

Per PUK's link:
[quote]US Vice-Admiral William Gortney said: “The sniper’s position on the fantail of the Bainbridge observed one of the pirates in the pilot house with [another] two pirates with their head and shoulders exposed. One of the pirates had their AK47 levelled at the captain’s back.

“The on-scene commander thought that the captain was in imminent danger and then made that decision, and he had the authority to make that decision and he had seconds to make that decision,” Vice-Admiral Gortney said in a videoconference from the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.

Captain Phillips, who was tied up in the 18ft covered lifeboat, was picked up by a US Navy launch and transferred from the USS Bainbridge to the USS Boxer, where he underwent a routine medical examination.
[/quote]

No second jump in the water.

16 year old pirate..leave him there with a chip in his arm. Tell him if the GPS system finds him anywhere near the sea again it will explode.

Seems odd the "negotiator" was only 16. Maybe pirates are trained to falsely claim to be teens if caught. And thank goodness the navy captain decided to interpret BO's orders as he saw fit. Too bad the CiC didn't trust the captain to do the right thing without encumbering him with determining when "imminent danger" had been reached.

Bravo for Captain Phillips and the SEALS. Whether or not Captain Phillips was in imminent danger, I'm glad the SEALS saw the opportunity and applied their sharpshooting skills.

I have a modest proposal for dealing with the 16 year old. Transport him to Cambridge, MA and suggest to Harvard Law School that HLS should hire him as a professor with full tenure to start the Center For the Study of Skull and Crossbones Law at HLS. I'm sure one of the multicultural or critical legal studies oriented profs at Harvard Law School or other Harvard school would be glad to share their living quarters with him.

TC's comment reminded me of a New York Times Magazine article in 2006 about the Taliban spokesman at the time of 9/11 being a new Yalie. The WSJ responded with the most outlandish bit (to me) from the article: The Times reported that Yale "had another foreigner of Rahmatullah's caliber apply for special-student status." Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions, told the Times that "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again."

DebinNC, I had forgotten about Shaw's remark. That's the problem with trying to satirize the effete elite. No matter how outlandish the satire, the actual sayings and doings of the effete elite are even more outlandish!

"Maybe the lefties will love the military now. Twould be a good thing..."

Sorry!

"TEENAGE SAILOR DEATH SHOOTINGS".
"Three teenage refugees were mercilessly gunned down by US Navy as they sought to escape Somali hell hole. A fourth is critically injured and seeking asylum in America.
Fill in your own senator.

Gateway Pundit is reporting about the non-reporting of Obama's brother being accused of rape.
Of course if this were GWB's brother or McCain's or any other Republican, certainly the MSM would have ignored it too, just another "distraction".

"a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5144046/President-Obamas-half-brother-denied-entry-to-Britain.html">Obama brother Samson. At least one girl was only thirteen.

I really stand in awe of the people who are called on to make those split second decisions when lives are in the balance, and do so. In this case, it seems to me that the commander was also operating under almost impossible terms of engagement.

I'd have said Captain Phillips' life was in "imminent" danger the moment he set foot on the lifeboat. Apparently we've defined that term almost out of existence, if you have to wait till you actually see someone pointing a gun at the victim's head, and then just have to hope your guy can pull a trigger faster than he does.

Such high hopes for so little brains. I wonder how many virgins these guys get when they get to where ever. I guess the 16 yr old must of been the ladie aboard means he is still alive. To bad we didn't have one more bullet.

This guy deserves schooling and punishment. So lets enroll him in Oprah's School in Africa where he's bound to get the sexual abuse he deserves from her staff, and it won't cost the US Taxpayer a nickel.

If you can believe it, the problem with sniper range, besides wind and gravity, is the rotation of the earth. The track of the bullet is different depending on the direction the bullet travels and it has to be factored in to the sight computation.

A thousand yards is within range of the top of the line sniper rifle. It may not be within range of the person pulling the trigger.

"Bravo Zulu" is the phonetic alphabet version of the two-flag signal BZ, meaning "well done."

I saw the retired Captain on Fox. He's not a former SEAL; he was an aviator (excellent commentator, too, though I haven't seen him for a while). Concerning long-range sniping, as PUK points out there are snipers in the US and Canadian armed forces (and no doubt others) who are good out to a thousand yards, but of course that's on land. The movement of the ship and the lifeboat would complicate things, but at 25 or 30 meterrs those shots would not be difficult for anyone accustomed to rifle shooting, although the guys you would pick to do it are of course the snipers.

A friend graduated from the USMC sniper school, where the graduation test was hitting a torso-sized silhouette three times out of five at 1,000 yards. I've shot all my life, and hunted quite a bit, but that kind of shooting is beyond my comprehension. There have been a couple of videos making the rounds of some absolutely incredible shots in Afghanistan.

I am eager to find out how things progressed to the point where the pirates allowed themselves to be taken in tow. At that point, it seems to me, the outcome was pretty much determined.

Fairly soon after news of the rescue broke I heard someone clarify that reports of the captain jumping overboard were a reference to the event of a couple of days ago, not to a new one. But it seemed to take several more hours before the commentariat in general caught on to this.

Funny, PeterUK how the body changes what it will let you do. 35 years ago I was a helluva shot. That iron sight would comfortably come down on the target without any shaking at all. I could shoot 10s all day standing, sitting, or prone.

We started shooting at a target in the basement made of 1/4 inch steel angled to a rotating catch and into a can. Shot CB caps and .22LR. Imagine all that lead made me as stupid as I am today.

sbw,
You can still see the sight? In the days when the sight was still on the end of the barrel,I was fourteen and on a school trip to Spain,there was a fairground where the prize was a glass of sherry.Now anyone who lets a kid shoot a .22 pump action for booze is mad.
Never been so il.

REPLYING TO EXTRANEUS COMMENT: I TRULY BELIEVE THE NAVY SEALS HAVE FAR BETTER THINGS TO DO THEN GET THEIR PICTURES TAKEN AT THE WHITE HOUSE. BESIDES THEY HAVE OTHER MEN TO DO THAT, THEY ARE CALLED POLITICIANS

I think someone finally told Obama the sight of 3 US warships being held off by 4 guys in a likeboat with rifles was ludicrous and the way out was to give the Captain authorization for the "imminent danger" BS, and he probably did take the first good chance he got after the order.

The longest shot I've ever heard of was almost 1,500 yards by the near-legendary Carlos Hathcock in Vietnam. Done with a .50 caliber in single-shot mode. Of course, he had a line of guys walk directly pass where he'd bore-sited it, so it' almost cheating, but still nearly unbelievable.

Of course, that sort of thing would be impossible on the water.

I read an account years ago of a NYC detective investigating the case of a woman shot to death while driving over a bridge. Since there was almost a mile of water between the bridge and the nearest (perpendicular) land mass, his first conclusion was that it had to be a freak accident. Remarkably, he ultimately found the shooter and confirmed his hypothesis.

Well, PD, at first glance I would say "fair enough, that makes sense." However, the scenario you have described is the case 100% of the time in a hostage situation. So again, what is the reason to wait?

I am afraid it's too late. All over the world pirates are offended by this attack and will soon be traveling to Somalia to join with their brothers to protect their way of life and their oceans against the occupying navies.

I will add to my above comment: if you wait until the hostage is in imminent danger, you are in reactive mode and you allow the pirates to set the time of action. They may already be desperate at that point. If you look for the best possible chance of surprise and then go for it, YOU get to decide when to act. Isn't this generally considered to be an advantage?

Did you know there was an East African Seafarers Assistance Program? Reuters says the head of it claims,"This is a big wake-up to the pirates. It raises the stakes. Now they may be more violent, like the pirates of old."

I am afraid it's too late. All over the world pirates are offended by this attack

Exactly right. After all, the left tells us that by fighting terrorists we actually make terrorism worse by helping them recruit more terrorists. Seems like the same principle should apply here, so I'll be interested to see what the left's reaction is.

DoT:
That was an astonishing video. The drop-down commentary was interesting too. I had no idea how large the sniper rounds are, and I didn't realize they went out in teams of three either. At that kind of range, though, I can see how you would need a spotter. That's something of an art in itself.

I used tag along on the occasional bird-watching hike with my ex, and there were some people who had a real talent for telling other people where to look for bird that had been sighted. They just had a knack for picking out and describing some salient feature that anyone would recognize. Other people could leave you clueless after multiple tries.

My own experience has been limited to shotguns, which are pretty forgiving, but I did get a chance to try a black powder rifle once, out west. It was hard to believe how far away the target was! The gun was an old one, but it was not exactly the "primitive" weapon I had thought it was.

Another "lockout" datum: Now what I'm seeing is that as soon as I put the cursor in the "Post a comment" box and type something, the Post and Preview buttons go from disabled to enabled. And back to disabled if I backspace over what I typed.

Wasn't seeing this before.

Still don't see the "Remember personal info" checkbox. The info is being remembered, but it's probably being supplied by Safari because my justoneminute.com cookies have not been re-created since I deleted them.